Institute

Founded in 1994, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) in Berlin is one of the more than 80 research institutes administered by the Max Planck Society. It is dedicated to the study of the history of science and aims to understand scientific thinking and practice as historical phenomena.

People

The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science comprises scholars across all Departments and Research Groups, as well as an Administration team, IT Support, Research IT Group, and Research Coordination and Communications team.

Publications & Resources

The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) engages with the research community and broader public, and is committed to open access.

This section provides access to published research results and electronic sources in the history of science. It is also a platform for sharing ongoing research projects that develop digital tools.

Researchers at the Institute benefit from an internal Library service. The Institute’s research is also made accessible to the wider public through edited Feature Stories and the Mediathek’s audio and video content.

News & Events

The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science frequently shares news, including calls for papers and career opportunities. The Media & Press section highlights press releases and the Institute's appearances in national and global media. Public events—including colloquia, seminars, and workshops—are shown on the events overview.

Olivia Judson is the new Journalist-in-Residence at the MPIWG

Olivia Judson works at the intersection between science and journalism. A former staff writer for The Economist, she has written for a wide range of newspapers and magazines, including National Geographic, The Guardian, and The New York Times (where, for two years, she wrote a weekly online column). Her academic background, however, is in evolutionary biology, and she is currently writing a history of life and Earth, aimed at a general audience. While at the MPIWG, she is planning to research the history of the ideas that she is developing, with a particular focus on work that was done by scientists educated in St Petersburg in the 1880s, such as Vladmir Vernadsky and Sergei Winogradsky.